The following article was left on my
desk at work by some anonymous individual about a month ago. It
originally appeared in the September 1997 edition of DECISION.
It is reproduced without permission, but if anyone happens to
know about the magazine, please drop me a line and I'd be happy
to discuss the article with the editor...

Cast your mind back to your first desktop
PC. It probably ran a very early version of Microsoft Word with
white letters on a blue background, or it might even have run
something truly archaic like Locoscript. The machine itself
probably had 640k of RAM, a size which Bill Gates himself said
was all anyone would ever need. Its hard disk capacity was
probably about 20 megabytes, while a CD-ROM was still a thing of
the future.

Now, compare it to your current desktop.
This probably runs Office 97 with the very latest versions of
Word, Excel and so on. It probably has a hard drive of about one
gigabyte (50 times the size of your first machine), RAM of 16
megabytes (30 times bigger), has a built-in modem, a 16-speed
CD-ROM and a few other features that you're not even aware of.
But does it get the job done any quicker?

Recent studies of computer use in offices
have revealed that large amounts of time which should be saved by
faster machines are being frittered away by software that is
unnecessarily difficult and inefficient.

For example, a study carried out in the
US among 6,000 workers found that they each spent an average of
5.1 hours each week "twiddling" with their computers.

A major cause of this is what the experts
describe as "creeping functionality". Each version of a
programme has more functions than the previous one, and arranges
them in different places on the menu just to confuse people
further. For example, the 1992 version of Microsoft Words for
Windows had 311 commands, the 1997 version has 1,033. Whether
anyone will ever use these additional 722 commands for anything
productive is anyone's guess. What is definite is the fact that
people who had mastered Word 2.0c will waste an awful lot of time
learning how to use Word 97 only to use it for precisely the same
tasks as the earlier version. Also, due to the size and
complexity of the programme, unless they invest in expensive new
hardware the software will actually run slower than the earlier
version - more time wasted.

Add to this the fact that computers and
information technology appear to have had a near zero impact on
prodcutivity over the years and it would appear that billions of
dollars are being wasted every year. Productivity growth in the
world's leadnig nations has fallen from a high of 4.5 percent
annually during the late 1960s to a mere 1.5 percent today. And
the economic growth of the 90s is explained by increased trade,
employment and production. The contribution of computers is
neglible.

A classic case in point is the US
hospital system. In 1968 the hospitals employed 435,000
administrative staff to serve 1.4 million patients at a time. By
1992 the average patient population had dropped to 853,000 while
the administrative staff complement had risen to 1.2 million.
Much of this increase was created by the increased amount of time
spent on information processing.

So, yes computers are bigger, better,
faster, but they don't seem to be making any meaningful
contribution to productivity. Perhaps this is the next challenge
of the information age - to realise the potential of computers to
make real productivity gains.